


Group Hug

by AutumnWoodsDreamer



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Deaf Clint Barton, Families of Choice, Family, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not Canon Compliant, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Team as Family, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnWoodsDreamer/pseuds/AutumnWoodsDreamer
Summary: Just some wholesome Avengers headcanons...
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Clint Barton & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	1. New Friends; Old Faces

Steve sought Bruce’s company when he was in need of a well-paced conversation. The man’s schedule and activities differed significantly from everyone else’s, but his habits were regular; he was easy to track and easy to find. They got on well, probably because Bruce was one of the few members of the team that didn’t remind Steve of someone he’d lost.

Natasha mirrored Peggy’s spunk, subtle humour, and confidence; she even had the same “Go ahead; underestimate me” vibe. Natasha was quieter and admittedly sharper, but when Steve saw perfectly bouncy curls framing a soft face graced with a teasing smile painted bright red, he forgot they weren’t the same person.

Steve naturally expected to see Howard reflected in his son, and there were times when Tony didn’t disappoint. But, as he got to know him, as he stood back and quietened his prejudice and actually observed, Tony dismantled that equation to the point Steve had to admit that the other man wasn’t very much like his father at all. Granted, Tony had that same larger-than-life quality to him, the same cockiness, the same snide attitude, and the same smartest-guy-in-the-room-and-knows-it; but, hidden not too well beneath that, he possessed a humility, an empathy, a gentleness that Howard, even at his best, never had.

Clint and Bucky would’ve gotten on like a house on fire. Steve didn’t see it at first because Clint didn’t drop his professional mask until the third week of them all living together but once he saw it and unintentionally drew the comparison, he would forever be plagued with a deep twinge of pain every time he saw the archer. Protective, serious, secretly amused by the dumbest things—Steve could see Clint and Bucky bonding over cheap beer and stories of dragging their unofficially adopted sibling’s idiotic and self-destructive butt out of alley fights.

Steve wondered if Bruce was meant to be his counterpart. He realized that wasn’t how this worked, that the parallels between this team and his lost friends was something he only perceived, but it didn’t stop him from going down that road. Only when he tried did he realize there were some commonalities: both were enhanced by science, neither wanted it anymore, they belonged nowhere, and they both believed themselves to be of limited use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I forget not everyone on AO3 is on Tumblr as well so I thought I might compile my little ideas and headcanons and share them on here so others can enjoy them, too!  
> There’s no plot, this isn’t really a story or even a one-shot collection; it’s just a bunch of snapshots of the team. They always brighten my day when I write them so I kind of hope they’ll help others. I mean, how can you not be in a better mood when you’re thinking about 2012 found-family Avengers?


	2. Natasha’s Favourite Colour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I’ll give you guys another one now because these are (mostly) pretty short...

Natasha’s favourite colour isn’t black or red.

It’s blue.

She gravitates toward black for her clothing because of its camouflage properties (and she looks good in black).

Red is her favourite hair colour (reddish-brown is her natural colour—which she likes but, because she has to go undercover so often, she has to dye it sometimes because wigs aren’t always reliable but she’s made various shades and tones of red her thing).

But if she ever had to lay claim to one colour as her favourite—and if she was being honest—she’d say blue.

All kinds of blue: The midnight blue of the standard SHIELD uniforms; the sparkly, glassy blue of the Pacific; the almost white blue of a clear, winter sky—and, conversely, the vivid blue of a summer sky; the subtle neon blue of the “A” displayed on the side of the Tower and the Compound or anywhere the team calls home; the silvery blue of Clint’s eyes; the bold blue of Steve’s uniform and the metallic blue of his shield; the glowing blue of Tony’s arc reactor...

Blue is her favourite colour because it doesn’t mean secrets and lies like black and it doesn’t remind her of blood and loss like red.

Blue is a hopeful colour, and it’s a part of all the good things in her life...


	3. Tony’s Bots

DUM-E is the eldest, the one Tony designed and built as a teen in MIT—his first attempt at a functioning artificial intelligence.

Tony didn’t intend to name him DUM-E, but the bot was so clumsy and so glitchy that the name slipped out many times (especially when he rode over Tony’s foot—a daily occurrence). The name stuck because the bot noticed Tony didn’t call anyone else “dummy”—not in his hearing range, at least—so he assumed it was his designation.

Tony built Butterfingers that next summer (the last one he spent with his parents). He followed DUM-E’s blueprints nearly to the letter but improved the design to make her sleeker.

Butterfingers is more responsive to vocal commands than DUM-E (i.e. she understands nuances and indirect speech better) but she’s ten times klutzier.

Maria actually named her. She came down to the workshop to check on Tony one day and he tried to show her what the new bot could do but she just kept dropping all the tools Tony requested she retrieve—every single one of them, so many until it was actually comical. Maria certainly found it entertaining and fondly called the bot a butterfingers.

Then came U. Tony built U many years later, long after J.A.R.V.I.S., who came online three years after his parents’ death. He became frustrated while working on the repulsor technology so he left that alone and focussed on something else. He ended up building another helper bot.

U is the sleekest and least clumsy of the bots.

U got his name because Tony was preoccupied (when is he not?). Obadiah was pressuring him to get the repulsor technology finished up and so Tony didn’t have time to really get to know his newest creation; he just used him as a gopher. Once the deadline passed and everyone at SI was happy and off his back, Tony focussed on U and discovered the bot had already grown attached to the simple designation so he let him be.  
  


Tony gives the bots tune-up weekly, repairs when necessary, but never tries to erase their “faults” because it would be like erasing a part of who they are.

Actually, Tony doesn’t really understand his bots’ quirks but he knows them, through and through: DUM-E has a state-of-the-art orientation system but he can’t tell his left from his right; Butterfingers’ claw is stronger than DUM-E’s, but she’s still prone to dropping things at random; U has the best processing power of all the bots, but he often mishears Tony and sometimes forgets what he’s doing like he’s absent-minded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. Love. The. Bots.


	4. Morning Routine

Steve wakes up the earliest, at 5 am sharp. It’s actually not a leftover-from-the-army kind of habit: the serum makes it that his body doesn’t require much sleep—in fact, he can go up to three full days without so much as a cat-nap and still operate at peak performance (yes, Tony is jealous). Another quirk of the serum is that his body generates excessive energy, so he gets up and goes for an hour long jog through Central Park, then, upon his return, immediately hits the gym to punish a few sandbags. By about 7 o’ clock, the sun’s up and he’s calm, showered and dressed; he puts the coffee on for the others and starts making his own breakfast (which is ludicrously big: bacon, eggs, toast, beans, sausages, hash browns, you name it—because his body doesn’t generate that energy from nothing.)

Natasha always comes through to the kitchen at precisely 7; she and Steve often walk through the doorway at the exact same time. Her routine is similar but based on SHIELD’s standard schedule which is to wake up at 6, do a basic round of training for an hour, then have breakfast; rigidity is her oldest companion, so she comfortably maintains the routine when she joins the Avengers. While Steve starts the coffee, she gets her own breakfast (she prefers cold food in the morning: yogurt, muesli, fruit, cereal, etc.) She sits at the counter, chatting with Steve as he cracks eight eggs into a frying pan; they banter a little but generally talk about what’s planned for the day and other business. As she eats, she also goes through reports or whatever else Fury has sent to the team (since she’s the designated bridge between SHIELD and the Avengers).

Although Clint adhered to the SHIELD routine when he worked there, once he’s on the Avengers, he’s very eager to drop it and keep his own hours. He still comes through at 7-ish (thanks to his circus days and his work as an agent, he can’t comfortably sleep in late anymore). He doesn’t do a workout first like Steve and Natasha; he trains throughout the day—sometimes all day—so the mornings he tries to slow down: he gets coffee, makes up a big bowl of cereal (never just one cereal—he’s that kind of guy that mixes about three different cereals together in one go, and never cereals that _do_ go together...) and then sits at the table, prompting the others to move there. He’s always up for starting conversations that have little to nothing to do with work.

Bruce... is irregular. He’ll either come through early, sometime between 7 or 8, well-rested and well-groomed, ready for the day or he’ll trudge through sometime after lunch, his hair not combed, his glasses on upside down, his clothing completely disheveled and nowhere near matching, and just generally looking like death warmed over (it doesn’t necessarily depend on if he’s coming down from a Hulk-out or not; Bruce is just naturally a disaster). He always goes for the coffee but stops himself just before he actually fills a cup; he makes a pot of tea instead (anything that’s not caffeinated; caffeine doesn’t actually trigger a Hulk-out but, ever since the radiation, it makes him feel weird so he just avoids it altogether). If Hulk’s hanging around, he doesn’t usually come to breakfast at all until he eventually starts to feel more comfortable around the others, then he’s there early, trying to get Steve to make him a breakfast like his.

For the first two months, they never see hide or hair of Tony. Team Breakfast becomes a thing and the others start asking Jarvis if he can let Tony know because they’d like to include him. Jarvis always says that Tony isn’t awake yet—Steve thinks it’s just an excuse. Bruce and Natasha take the initiative, making up a breakfast tray and bringing it to Tony because they start to wonder if he eats at all: they never see him eat and Jarvis will only divulge so much. Of course, they don’t ever find the inventor in his bedroom; he’s in the workshop, conked out on an old, tattered couch or absorbed in his work. They don’t disturb him, they just leave the tray on a clear worktop for him and make it a thing between them to take turns bringing him breakfast (the tray rarely comes back cleared, but the coffee is always polished off). Gradually, Tony starts showing up in the kitchen of his own accord, some time around 8 when most of the others are already finished. He doesn’t stay at first, just grabs a muesli bar and leaves without drawing any attention to himself. It’s only when Clint catches him and outright invites him to the table that Tony comes to join them properly. He doesn’t have breakfast (with them or at all) every day, but they know he’s doing okay when he at least makes one morning a week.


	5. Gadgets & Gizmos

Pretty much as soon as the Avengers form and base their operations at the Tower, Tony begins upgrading their tech. This actually surprises most of them: opening his doors to them and offering to pay all their expenses was already a breathtaking display of generosity—they didn’t expect him to also improve the tools of their trade; not so thoroughly, anyway.

He redesigns Steve’s uniform to make it bulletproof but still light and flexible enough to accomodate his gymnastic manoeuvres; he does away with the cowl design and makes a helmet instead; he also re-examines the colour palette and adds a bunch of pockets and holsters as well as a better utility belt. Most of the features and the overall look echoes Steve’s first outfit, the one he actually designed himself and Howard then had made. He doesn’t know Tony‘s making it for him until he calls him down to the ‘shop to get his input on the final draft. Steve is impressed but he finds it hard to accept it at first because it‘s so well made, so much thought has been put into it, he hadn’t even asked for it and it couldn’t have been cheap or easy to make. But Tony just waves a dismissive hand and says that he won’t be on a team and have his associates run around with inferior suits and shoddy equipment—it would hurt his brand, he says.

Clint keeps the suit SHIELD made for him because they let him have a lot of say in its design, but he’s very quick to throw out the bow, quiver, and arrows they supplied him when Tony offers him an upgrade. The improved hearing aids, though, were a surprise. One day, almost a month after the team moves in together, he fears he’s misplaced his aids—he searches his room, turning it inside out and upside down, but can’t find a trace of them. They reappear that evening, sitting on his dresser like they’ve always been there and, a week later, a neat little box housing a brand new pair appears in the exact same place. He thinks it‘s a gift from Natasha until he notices a simple little note tucked in the box that just reads: “Let me know of needed adjustments - TS.” Clint gives them a go and he is astounded: they’re sleeker and work a lot better than his SHIELD-issue ones, they have a ton of special features and they’re infinitely more comfortable than any pair he’s ever used before.

Bruce and Hulk don’t really have much tech (besides the stretchy pants, of course). But Tony does put forth the effort to make a comms device that will stay in Bruce’s ear through a Hulk-out and that can withstand explosions and such. He also makes a bunch of spare glasses for Bruce that are practically indestructible.

Tony has the most fun redesigning Natasha’s gear because, as a spy, she relies on a wide-range of gadgetry—she almost has more gadgets than the Iron Man armour. He engineers a better Widow suit based off the SHIELD-issue uniform: bullet-proof, flexible, comfortable, durable. He makes it a point to let her have a big say in the design of her suit and tech because he knows there’s a lot about the suits the SHIELD design teams have made for her in the past that she never liked (*cough* painfully tight is an unnecessary feature *cough*). He adds integrated arc reactor circuitry (the blue glowy detailing) so her Widow’s Bites and other gadgets never run the risk of losing power; it also enables her to power and operate the Iron Man armour. He also upgrades her bracelets with defibrillators that are specifically capable of resetting his heart rhythm and restarting the chest piece because, up until then, if anything happened on a mission, he had no fail-safe.

The team really appreciates their new tech, as well as the fact that Tony will personally repair or improve their stuff for them whenever needed. They are moved to get him something to say thank you but it’s really hard thinking of what to get the guy who can get or make anything he wants or needs. They turn to Jarvis who happily gives them a few tips and encourages them. They end up getting Tony a new blender (because he likes smoothies—he practically lives off them—and he’s stripped the other blender for parts and put it back together so many times that they’re surprised it doesn’t shoot lasers yet). The blender they get for him is virtually noiseless and (the clincher) it’s Hot Rod red.

They call him up to the living room one day and, when he arrives, he sees them standing around with big, goofy grins. They step aside to reveal a biggish box wrapped in shiny blue gift-wrap with a slightly ridiculous silver bow slapped on top standing on the coffee table (Natasha instructed them not to “give” it to him but to rather just set it down and let Tony decide if he wants to touch it or not).

He just stands there, staring at it, blinking like his brain broke. For a while, the team fears they’ve done something wrong, maybe overstepped a boundary or something. Then he looks up at them with honest confusion so Steve takes the lead and explains that it’s gift from all of them to say thank you for all the incredible new tech he’s gone out of his way to make for them.

The Hot Rod blender has pride of place in his workshop’s kitchenette and Tony never tampers with it, never “improves” it; he’ll fix it if it needs it but, otherwise, he keeps it just as it came.


	6. Team Movie Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Daisy, and Peter are here for reasons...

Clint actually instigated Movie Night.

The first couple of Movie Nights were really just him and Natasha trying to introduce Steve to modern pop culture.

Steve... didn’t always join them.

Then Bruce suggested that they hold off on that idea and maybe play an old _old_ movie.

They decided to watch a Marx Brothers’ film (one Steve actually hadn’t gotten a chance to see before).

Steve loved it! They never saw their captain laugh sohard before—they had to pause the movie a number of times just so he could collect himself.

Tony even came out of the workshop to witness the spectacle for himself.

He ended up staying for the rest of the film and, subsequently, cleared his schedule so he could join the next Movie Night.

Movie Nights are held in Thursdays because bad guys generally don’t cause much trouble on Thursday nights.

Quite often, they watch with the closed captions on because sometimes Clint’s tired of hearing by the end of the day (but it’s really just an excuse to lower the volume—especially if it’s a new action movie...)

Popcorn is not allowed, not since “The Incident.” It is banned. No exceptions. None. Ever.

Other snacks and beverages are welcome; chocolate-coated peanuts are on thin ice though...

Steve sits front and centre, right in the middle of the main couch facing the TV; when Sam and Daisy join the team, they sit on either side of him.

Bruce sits in the armchair by the lamp because sometimes he doesn’t care about the movie but he grows to liking the company so he wears headphones and zones out like a teenager.

Clint... doesn’t “sit” really. He perches on the back of the couch or lounges upside down with his legs hanging off the back or the side of the couch or just sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, hugging a pillow and looking every bit like a little kid

Natasha sits on the couch off to the side, on the chaise. She always has a blanket and a million pillows.

Tony lies stretched out like a happy cat on the same couch as Natasha, often resting his sock-clad feet in her lap (something he does completely absent-mindedly but she pretends not to notice). He’s the only one who ever falls asleep during the movie.

When Peter joins the team, he first tries to be good and just take a small spot on the couch but he just can’t get comfortable. Then Clint tells him this isn’t school—he can sit however and wherever he wants. So he takes to spinning a web hammock very close to the ceiling and watching from there (because he loves heights).

The privilege of choosing the movie rotates but sometimes one forfeits their turn if they do something dumb in training ( _cough_ , Clint, _cough_ ) or neglect to fill out their mission reports ( _cough_ , Peter, _cough_ ).

Steve pretty much always chooses either comedies (both old and new) or Disney. Anything Disney.

Daisy has a wide-range of favourites, but she really, _really_ loves spy movies.

Sam is the only one who ever suggests just released movies.

Clint’s choices vary wildly; sometimes he suggests sci-fi thrillers, other times he suggests family favourites like _Dr Dolittle_.

Bruce always chooses black and white movies and old sci-fi films with patchy plots, cringe worthy acting, and terrible special effects

Natasha is a shameless nerd: _Hitchhiker’s Guide, I, Robot, How to Train Your Dragon_... stuff like that.

Tony never actually takes his turn to choose the movie.

So Peter sometimes uses his turn to choose the movie to pick something his mentor likes (he pries that information from Jarvis); otherwise, it’s the _Spongebob Movie_ for the fiftieth. time. in. a. row.

They never quietly sit and enjoy a movie; they always MST3K it (i.e. talk for the characters and make them say dumb stuff, point out the inaccuracies, carry on ridiculous running gags, etc...)

Clint is the reigning MST3K champion.

(Only because Tony keeps falling asleep halfway).

Natasha is a strong contender.

Peter makes the best wise-cracks.

Whatever Bruce adds is pretty much never funny.

Sam just wants to watch the movie.

Daisy never says anything until the characters start “hacking” computers.

Steve’s never fast enough and he just wants to watch the movie so can you guys please cut it out? Thank you.


End file.
